Hi Guys!
As I promised before, I'm starting a whole new thread for this device. I drank a bit tonight so even if I write some jebrish i hope you guys understand lol
Anyway, if you are a SD'er or Newegg's promotion follower like me, you probably have seen this machine go on the sale all the time. Here are the links for two NT-A3500:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6856119072
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6856119050
Newegg lists the black one as NTA350-0H0W-B-A-NA but that's just madness. It's just simply NT-A3500. It comes in two colors, black white. It seems like they go on sale for about $150 avg. As of right now, the white one is on sale for $139.99. If you can get a cheap ram and a sd card, you've got yourself a small book size htpc. I will explain more about this below.
There is a newer version with the newer processor (E-450). The model number for that is NT-A3700. This basically has the same hardware as NT-A3500, but with a slightly better processor. In reality, this difference is barely noticeable, so if they're the same price i would go with E-450 processor, but if E-350 is cheaper, I would go with E-350. I mean if we're looking at E-350/E-450 processors we are not looking to build a powerful system. we're just doing a budget build that can handle a lot of goodies.
I recommended this product few time in this forum, and I've gotten a lot of questions about it. Mainly how it performs. Since it is a E-350 processor a lot of people do not expect too much out of it, but it is definitely underrated processor.
When i first got this device, I loaded Windows 7 in it. I just had this assumption where Fusion = Windows. It worked okay, but XBMC was not smooth as I expected in Windows. That's when I decided to go with OpenELEC. OpenELEC has Fusion build. This seems to be optimized for fusion devices. Please see http://openelec.tv/ for more info
Here is my setup for this device:
This is how I have set this device up, and my gf has been happy with the device ever since i got it.
now, here's what people wonder about the most with this device. How does it perform without the ssd? How does it performs with a SD Card rather than a SSD since OpenELEC can be installed in a sd card?
So. I did some testing with my sd card. I used Sandisk 16GB Class 4 to do this testing.
First, Cold boot time + Aeon MQ3 Performance + Looking through library setup:
As you can see, Cold boot up time is actually still fast, a heavy skin like MQ3 runs butter smooth, and there is no lag going through the movie lib.
Only problem you have noticed is that there is no sound. There is a fix you can do to make the menu sound to work, but no menu sound is actually okay with me so I didn't bother. OpenELEC actually works "out of the box" except for the sound. If you don't mind having no menu sound, all you have to do is go to Settings -> System -> Audio output. Then select "hdmi (ALSA)" for the Audio output device if you're using HDMI that is. I think the sound should work out of the box if you were just using normal audio jack.
Oh also, there is a small internal speaker that can get a bit annoying. I just took it off from the computer. I recommend you to do it as well, but you dont need to.
Anyway, that was the performance of XBMC itself, now here is a video of how well it plays video. I'm testing out with 1080P mkv movie that's in the external drive:
As you can see, even while it's playing 1080p mkv movie, there's almost no stuttering navigating through movies. Just to be clear, this instance of OpenELEC is running off from the SD CARD and has 2GB of ram. Also, it's very quiet in my opinion. Can barely hear anything even I'm right next to it.
So far, I've only talked about the good thing about this machine.. and I am sure people also want to hear what is bad about this device as well!
Here is a simple list of things that's not good about this box:
So here it is, my thoughts of the device. If you would like to know more about the device, let me know. If you want me to test something else, let me know!
But Overall, this device rocks my girlfriend's socks.
As I promised before, I'm starting a whole new thread for this device. I drank a bit tonight so even if I write some jebrish i hope you guys understand lol
Anyway, if you are a SD'er or Newegg's promotion follower like me, you probably have seen this machine go on the sale all the time. Here are the links for two NT-A3500:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6856119072
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6856119050
Newegg lists the black one as NTA350-0H0W-B-A-NA but that's just madness. It's just simply NT-A3500. It comes in two colors, black white. It seems like they go on sale for about $150 avg. As of right now, the white one is on sale for $139.99. If you can get a cheap ram and a sd card, you've got yourself a small book size htpc. I will explain more about this below.
There is a newer version with the newer processor (E-450). The model number for that is NT-A3700. This basically has the same hardware as NT-A3500, but with a slightly better processor. In reality, this difference is barely noticeable, so if they're the same price i would go with E-450 processor, but if E-350 is cheaper, I would go with E-350. I mean if we're looking at E-350/E-450 processors we are not looking to build a powerful system. we're just doing a budget build that can handle a lot of goodies.
I recommended this product few time in this forum, and I've gotten a lot of questions about it. Mainly how it performs. Since it is a E-350 processor a lot of people do not expect too much out of it, but it is definitely underrated processor.
When i first got this device, I loaded Windows 7 in it. I just had this assumption where Fusion = Windows. It worked okay, but XBMC was not smooth as I expected in Windows. That's when I decided to go with OpenELEC. OpenELEC has Fusion build. This seems to be optimized for fusion devices. Please see http://openelec.tv/ for more info
Here is my setup for this device:
- Barebone: NT-A3500 Black
- Ram: Mushkin DDR3 1333 2GB
- SDD: Vertex Plus 30GB
- Extra: Flirc + Harmony One, 3TB USB 3.0 External HDD
This is how I have set this device up, and my gf has been happy with the device ever since i got it.
now, here's what people wonder about the most with this device. How does it perform without the ssd? How does it performs with a SD Card rather than a SSD since OpenELEC can be installed in a sd card?
So. I did some testing with my sd card. I used Sandisk 16GB Class 4 to do this testing.
First, Cold boot time + Aeon MQ3 Performance + Looking through library setup:
As you can see, Cold boot up time is actually still fast, a heavy skin like MQ3 runs butter smooth, and there is no lag going through the movie lib.
Only problem you have noticed is that there is no sound. There is a fix you can do to make the menu sound to work, but no menu sound is actually okay with me so I didn't bother. OpenELEC actually works "out of the box" except for the sound. If you don't mind having no menu sound, all you have to do is go to Settings -> System -> Audio output. Then select "hdmi (ALSA)" for the Audio output device if you're using HDMI that is. I think the sound should work out of the box if you were just using normal audio jack.
Oh also, there is a small internal speaker that can get a bit annoying. I just took it off from the computer. I recommend you to do it as well, but you dont need to.
Anyway, that was the performance of XBMC itself, now here is a video of how well it plays video. I'm testing out with 1080P mkv movie that's in the external drive:
As you can see, even while it's playing 1080p mkv movie, there's almost no stuttering navigating through movies. Just to be clear, this instance of OpenELEC is running off from the SD CARD and has 2GB of ram. Also, it's very quiet in my opinion. Can barely hear anything even I'm right next to it.
So far, I've only talked about the good thing about this machine.. and I am sure people also want to hear what is bad about this device as well!
Here is a simple list of things that's not good about this box:
- ONE RAM SLOT: This device only has one ram slot, so there is definitely ram limitation here if you're planning on using Windows
- HIGH TEMP: In the 2nd video, not sure if you saw but GPU's temperature is about 65 ish. E-350 should be able to take this heat, but to some people this may not be a good news
- NO WAKE FROM FRONT USB's: This is something that bothered me the most. There is an option in BIOS (with updated BIOS) to turn on USB 3.0 wake from suspend, but it was not possible to wake from the USB 3.0.. and two USB ports that's in the front, they're both USB 3.0.. This can be a deal breaker for some of you if you want to insert the remote dongle in front of the box.
- PROCESSOR: I just wanted to add this here for people that want features more than playback of some video files. As you can tell, this box runs the best on OpenELEC, which means no streaming Netflix and some other function that can be done in windows... and even though i did say E-350 is powerful, it is still E-350. there is definitely some hardware limitation with that. It's just good enough for playing video files. nothing more, nothing less.
- NOT FOR WINDOWS: I had to add this too.. Not sure if you read the whole post, but I did mention that I tried Windows. Windows is no good. In Windows, even XBMC stutters. I didn't even want to try playing videos. This box machine works the best in OpenELEC
So here it is, my thoughts of the device. If you would like to know more about the device, let me know. If you want me to test something else, let me know!
But Overall, this device rocks my girlfriend's socks.
